Coronavirus

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:54): My question is to the Premier. Why is the government investing resources in an aged-care testing response for COVID-19 when the commonwealth has funded an identical service? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr PICTON: The federal government last month funded Sonic Healthcare, the owner of Clinpath, to provide dedicated pathology services for rapid COVID-19 testing in aged care. This week, the minister announced that SA Pathology had assembled a team for rapid aged-care testing of their own. The CEO of Clinpath yesterday in the media described the duplication as exactly the same thing, and it seems to me to be a waste of government funds.

The SPEAKER: There is a fair bit in that, member for Kaurna, so I am going to allow a broad answer. Premier.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:54): Thank you very much, sir. I will get a specific answer regarding this back to the member, but can I just say that we take our advice regarding public health very seriously. We have excellent public health advice in South Australia and a great part of that has been the testing regime that has been put in place.

I understand that as of today there have been 72,000 COVID-19 tests, which have been put in place in South Australia since February. This is extraordinarily high per capita in Australia and, quite frankly, extraordinarily high per capita in the rest of the world. This is one of the fundamental pillars of our strong response to COVID-19 and it is one of the best defences that we have had against this pandemic coming to South Australia in much greater numbers. We are very grateful for the methodology that was put in place by the head clinician at SA Pathology, Dr Tom Dodd, earlier in the year.

There has been innovation after innovation with regard to the methodology and the testing. One of the things that I know country members in this place, and in fact people right across the state, are very excited about is the rapid response COVID-19 test that is now available in I think up to 20 country hospitals in South Australia. This means that, rather than have a delay when somebody goes into the hospital, the result can be provided now within 45 to 60 minutes. This is an absolutely extraordinary turnaround from where we were in terms of testing earlier in the year.

We have had the incredible innovation of the drive-through COVID-19 testing, which was first pioneered here in South Australia, and I think was one of the first places in the world. Dr Tom Dodd said to me recently that he felt very chuffed when he received a request for information regarding our pathology in South Australia from Stanford University—one of the highest ranked universities in the world, ringing up and speaking to the pathology lead at SA Pathology. This is absolutely fantastic and we are very proud of that.

Of course, we cannot become complacent. This is one of the reasons why we are actively encouraging everybody who falls into the new and much expanded testing regime to go and get themselves tested. One of our real levels of concern was whether or not that daily testing would drop off. Last week, I think it averaged about 1,500 per day, which is more than acceptable. We are very pleased with that. I have just had a quick look at what it has been over the last 24 hours and I think it has been around 1,000. We don't want this number to drop off and we don't want people to become complacent.

We know unequivocally that people are relieved that we have, as of the update yesterday, just one person living with this illness in South Australia, but we don't want people to become complacent. We know that this is a deadly disease and we know that it is highly infectious. With great sadness, we read reports from places like the United Kingdom, where they have had more than 30,000 deaths in just the last five or six weeks. This is what happens if you don't have a really robust response to COVID-19 and it is going to be very difficult for them to recover from that point. We have one shot at getting this right in South Australia, and I think pathology has been an absolute pillar of our response and it will continue into the future.